criminal cautions and social work application. any help is appreciated, thanks.

loobyloo1980 wrote:

I'm hoping that my local school, for whom I have done work experience before, will give me some more voluntary experience so that i could make use of that too. I know the deputy head personally so it is possible I could get a helping hand anyway.

Don't panic, but you do know that increasingly schools are carrying out CRB checks on volunteers, don't you? This can't happen without your knowledge - the application form is a flipping nightmare! If you have any concerns about this, you could ask who gets to check the forms off within school and what would happen if a check came back with something on it. This is a valid question for anyone - mistakes have happened!

The worst thing you can do is not mention your conviction until you are forced to do so. Someone did this to me: helping with an out of school club, our application form asked if people had any convictions. An applicant said "no", and after interview we appointed them subject to references and police check. When we gave them the forms to fill in for the police check they realised that their past offences - and we're talking a long time past here! - would come out, so I got a panic phone call. They hadn't declared the convictions because they related to 20 years previously, they'd been in a bad place and were now completely reformed, and didn't think they were the same person.

I didn't see why their past should be a bar to the job, although it wasn't my call. So with permission, I phoned the person who was going to see the result of the check, and she agreed with me. These checks were coming to us via Ofsted, and they just passed it on: didn't even say "You should think twice about employing this person" even though there were four pages of it! (normally just 1) It made us review our procedures for storing the forms as well: until then they'd all come back without any disclosures so we'd just kept them on staff file. From that point on they were all re-sealed in an envelope and kept on file so that you couldn't tell there was anything different about the ones with disclosures on!

I'm now involved in processing the checks for volunteers for the charity where I work. We say up front that a criminal record is not a bar to working with us. We've agreed that if someone 'discloses' an offence or offences are 'disclosed' then the manager who sees the disclosure notice will discuss with the Chair of Trustees whether there is a problem, but without saying who it is we're talking about. There are very few offences which would give us any pause for thought unless they were very recently committed. People change.

I agree with Pollen, go for it girl!

I beleive the CRB checks are done in india (surprise there then)... i have had my come back cleared with the wrong name on them! and i know of one other colleague who has also had clearance with the wrong name on... how they manage to change the names i will never know.... the implications of this happening is scarey!

spl2nh,

You know you have the cautions and this will show up - even if by chance they are not noted, further checks should reveal them and you would be unwise not to disclose and this may scupper your opportunities. However as advised cautions/convictions do not mean you have ruined your chosen career especially as cautions are for offences that are not in the public interest to proceed with, therefore they will be minor. Social Work and other careers such as teaching, health etc, do involve enhanced checks but employers pay for this. Therefore, don't fritter this money on a subject access check but treat yourself with your £10.00.

I wish you well in your career.